Author: Thomas Holt

Every year, massive data breaches harm the public. The targets are email service providers, retailers and government agencies that store information about people. Each breach includes sensitive personal information such as credit and debit card numbers, home addresses and account usernames and passwords from hundreds of thousands – and sometimes millions – of people. When National Public Data, a company that does online background checks, was breached in 2024, criminals gained the names, addresses, dates of birth and national identification numbers such as Social Security numbers of 170 million people in the U.S., U.K. and Canada. The same year, hackers…